These questions were the initial impetus behind The Presence of Touch. Additionally, when our students were asked, "What is the value of physical materiality in this age of cybermedia?," the overwhelming response reflected the desire to work with physical materials because they accessed a range of possibilities not fulfilled by some of the newer electronic technologies. Strong feelings about sensuality, touch, labor, and material meanings were underscored. Many students today are engaged in thinking and working with fibers, cloth and hand processes, while at the same time challenged and confronted by new technology and computer-mediated experiences. As a result these students are investigating interconnections between the haptic and the somatic on the one hand and the artificially intelligent, the simulated, and the digital on the other.
(Nagelbach quote)

We recognize that there are many textile identities that are "as multiple and subtle as there are artists and experiments," as Anne Ferrer, one of the artists in the exhibition, has mentioned.1. One fundamental meaning and essential quality of textile centers around the sense of touch. This basic connection to our bodies and minds, how we experience and translate the information of the world through touching is critical to cloth. Many words originating from the history of textiles embrace both literal descriptions of cloth as well as metaphorical references to our condition as physical beings. Some of these words include: the hand of the cloth, the drape, the rub; its softness and coarseness; its viscerality and tactility; the structural web or net; the restoration, deterioration, and impermanence of cloth; its proximity and intimacy; its absorbency, permeability, and repellence; its elasticity and permutability.

The special opportunity of being able to curate this exhibition, through the generous support of the William Bronson and Grayce Slovet Mitchell Lectureship in Fiber, makes it possible to present the work of eight European and Canadian artists who have not shown previously in Chicago. This exhibition is intended to bring a range of new ideas, possibilities, and questions to our community, as well as other perspectives informed by concerns particular to international cultures. As all of the works are to a certain extent, site-specific, the Lectureship also makes it possible to bring the artists to Chicago to install their pieces. This affords students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago the opportunity for interaction and exchange, and introduces the artists to a wide audience through the form of public lectures. The exhibition highlights five major installations by Ingrid Bachmann (Montreal), Anne Ferrer (Paris), David Rokeby (Toronto), Stephen Schofield (Montreal), and Erwin Wurm (Vienna). In a documentary section of the exhibition we are also including three seminal artists/projects -- Ingrid Bachmann and Barbara Layne Collaboration (Montreal), Regina Frank (Berlin), and Paul Sermon (Berlin) -- as a means of extending the scope of ideas. Our selections include art works that may fall within the "discipline" of textiles as well as works that clearly do not, but are specifically chosen because of their contribution to the discourse of touch.
(Franklin quote)

One of the major issues that is evident throughout the work of the artists is the permeability, transformation, and responsiveness of the textile in relationship to the human body. The textile, as we know it through its most intimate surrounding of our bodies, is constantly in flux, taking its form and qualities from the tensioned interaction with our physical selves. This quality is layered when the textile is a found object and brings its own history and meaning with it. Not only is the textile structurally made through a process of permutation and repetition, but its ability to take on many transformations and identities bespeaks the different ways in which we inhabit our various cultures. Erwin Wurm's Pullover series and videos, especially 59 Positions, confront us with this possibility. Found sweaters are arranged, folded and draped in multiple configurations. In Pullovers, these objects become abstractions and raise questions about the displacement of form and function when out of context of the body. In 59 Positions an absurdity occurs when, although now in the context of the body, the sweater is manipulated in such extreme ways that the human figure within becomes grotesque and unrecognizable.

The quality of human feeling through the reference to skin or membrane, and its implications of touch is also apparent in many of the artists' works. In Stephen Schofield's installation, Tarjuman, cloth membranes become crystallized mattresses through processes of forced-air expansion and syrup impregnation. These oddly stacked, crisp, yet hollow, beds are intensely vulnerable. Whatever eroticism that is normally associated with the site of the bed is altered with the empathetic recognition of the complete fragility implicit in all interpersonal relationships.

Conversely, Anne Ferrer's Tango heightens the underlying sexuality and violence that frequently coexist between partners. Rituals of power and dominance are suggested by these monumental sewn-and-stuffed hog carcasses, trussed in harnesses. What is usually perceived as soft, seductive, intimate and appealing fills the gallery space with a gutsy, in-your-face confrontation. These works not only exploit the potential tactility and scale of sumptuous cloth, but also question the societal expectations about acceptable behavior and gendered relationships.
(Oruch quote)

The ways in which we receive, process, and respond to information is fundamental to human communication. This phenomenon is effected by and reflects the different "touch" implications of the technologies of hand, the hand tool, mechanical devices, the computer and digital processes. Ingrid Bachmann explores these implications in her interactive installation, Knit One, Swim 2, for this exhibition. Engaging the viewer in an overwhelming bodily encounter with a gigantic pair of knitting needles, the action invoked is translated into many tangential responses, including a residual marking/notation system and the construction of a digital image (knitting of a virtual fabric).
(Plant quote)

The weave draft, a graphic representation of the appearance and/or mechanics of a particular woven structure, has always embraced a fundamental relationship between a notational form and a material form. Computers have contributed to the speed and flexibility of the drafting process. Fault Lines, made in collaboration between Ingrid Bachmann and Barbara Layne, is included in the documentary section of the exhibition. Here, computer-assisted looms are programmed to translate recorded daily seismographic information between two exhibition locales: Montreal and Santa Monica. Increments of cloth are then woven each day by individual handweavers in each of these sites. The subtle tectonic movements of the earth are thus recorded through one of the earliest and one of the most recent technologies known to humankind. The persistent shift of the earth's plates is reflected in the repetitive motion of the loom, integrating the unfelt with the touchable.
(Druckrey quote)

This ever-present relationship between the material and the immaterial is also one of the concerns raised in this exhibition. In the most transparent and non-visual installation of the exhibition, Very Nervous System, David Rokeby challenges our fundamental notions of physicality. Upon entering a room, the viewer becomes aware that his/her simple displacement of air causes a profound reaction of sound within the environment. The body's touching of space fully creates and alters an otherwise seemingly empty site. "One interesting aspect of 'interactive' works, such as Rokeby's, is the bridge -- or the gap -- between virtual and physical space. This work occupies both modes of experience simultaneously, i.e., the creation of a 'virtual' sound space within a real physical space." 2.

In Paul Sermon's Telematic Dreaming, included in the documentary section, a bed exists within the gallery space onto which an image of a person in another bed is projected in real-time. The viewer is then able to interact with this telepresence producing an incredibly uncanny exchange. How is it possible to touch and be touched by the virtual? Does this projected representation of another person feel? In terms of communication, where does authenticity reside in these two different bodies?

Regina Frank utilizes many forms of language to question human interactions. In Hermes' Mistress, also in the documentary section, Frank inhabits a luxurious red ballgown while corresponding on her laptop through the Internet. As she sends and receives messages, she transcribes these onto her dress by sewing lettered beads into concentric circles from hem to bodice. Not only does she transform her identity as she becomes surrounded by words, but she challenges our perception of verbal exchange. The relationship and difference of time-consuming hand embellishment is heightened in its juxtaposition to the speed of digital communication.
(Collins quote)

Each artist in this show is, in his or her own way, working in a form of installation. This context raises a final issue about the nature of touch and textile. Both are site-specific and body-related. In order to be touched, we must touch, and vice versa. "It is possible to see without being seen but it is not possible to touch without at the same time being touched. One never emerges intact from any contact." 3. Cloth forms and textiles find their meaning in relationship to interaction -- in their making, in their use, in their cultural references and material implications.

As we might ultimately require the memory of touch to negotiate, understand and interpret the space of the virtual, we also must rely on a history of learned technologies to develop and interpret new ones. The complex ways in which the human body filters and responds to information are rapidly being reexamined and re-defined by new technologies and are at the forefront of contemporary inquiry. This exhibition explores the correspondences and the complementary relationships between felt experience through physical materiality and the new arenas of digital projective space.

Joan Livingstone, Professor
Anne Wilson, Professor
Curators of the Exhibition

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Department of Fiber

July 1996